The region of Chameria overlaps to a high degree with the ancient and modern region of Thesprotia and the medieval region known as Vagenetia, lying north of Ambracian Gulf and west of the Pindus mountains.[5] The northern boundary of the region is not precisely defined: in Antiquity, the northern boundary of Thesprotia was the Thyamis river,[5] but in the Middle Ages, the presumed borders were pushed to the north. Vagenetia included today's Sarandë District and Delvinë District of Southern Albania, bordering with the Llogara and Muzina mountains in the north and northeast, the same borders that Chameria had in early modern history.[citation needed]

In modern times, the region of Chameria was reduced to the dialectological territory of the Chams, stretching between the mouth of the Acheron river in the south, the area of Butrint in the north, and the Pindus in the east.[6] After the permanent demarcation of the Greco-Albanian border, only two small municipalities were left in southern Albania (Markat and Konispol), while the remainder of the territory fell under the Greek prefectures of Thesprotia (a name revived by the Metaxas Regime in 1936) and Preveza, with a few villages in Ioannina Prefecture.[citation needed]

Pre-War Greek sources say that Chamerian coast extentds from Acheron River to Buthroton (Butrint) and the inland reaches east till the slopes of the Mount Olytsikas (or Tomaros). The center of Chameria is considered to be Paramythia and other areas are Philiati, Parga and Margariti.[7]

The region is mostly mountainous, with valleys and hills concentrated in the southern part, while farmlands are in northern part. Most of them with gridded roads and ditches are within the valleys in the central, southern and the western part. There are five rivers in the region, namely Pavllo in the north, Acheron, LourosArachthos and Thyamis. Four of them are in Greece, with only the first in Albania.

There are numerous archeological sites from Iron Age (10th to 7th centuries) onwards. In Thesprotia, which can be considered the centre of Chameria, excavations have brought to light finds of this period in the Kokytos valley.[9] The Nekromanteion of Acheron is probably the most important site of the area in antiquity, mentioned already in Homer. Archaeological findinds indicate that a sancturary existed there by 7th century BC. It seems that it ceased to function as an oracle in Roman period.[10] Other important settlements are Ephyra, Buthrotum, the Cheimerion (5 km west of Ephyra), Photike (some identify it with Paramythia), the port of Sybota, the city of Thesprotia, the port city of Elea (in the region of Thesprotia) which is believed to be a Corinthian colony, Pandosia, a colony of Elis, Tarone, near the mouth of river Thyamis, and others, depending on the definition of Chameria.[11]

During the Ottoman rule, the region was under the Vilayet of Ioannina, and later under the Pashalik of Yanina. During this time, the region was known as Chameria (also spelled Tsamouria, Tzamouria) and became a district in the Vilayet of Yanina.[3][16]

In the 18th century, as the power of the Ottomans declined, the region came under the semi-independent state of Ali Pasha Tepelena, an Albanian brigand who became the provincial governor of Ioannina in 1788. Ali Pasha started campaigns to subjugate the confederation of the Souli settlements in this region. His forces met fierce resistance by the Souliotes warriors. After numerous failed attempts to defeat the Souliotes, his troops succeeded in conquering the area in 1803.[17]

After the fall of the Pashalik, the region remained under the control of the Ottoman Empire, while Greece and Albania declared that their goal was to include in their states the whole region of Epirus, including Thesprotia or Chameria.[18] Finally, following the Balkan Wars, Epirus was divided in 1913, in the London Peace Conference, and the region came under the control of Kingdom of Greece, with only a small portion being integrated into the newly formed State of Albania.[18]

During the Turkish occupation Chameria had a feudal system of administration. The most important and older feudal clan was that of Proniati of Paramythia (Drandakis).

In 1930s the population was approximately 70,000, the Muslim Albanian speakers estimated around 18,000–20,000. All the population, independently of religion of ethnicity, were called Chams [23] (According to the 1928 census the total Muslim population in Greece was 126.017[24]).

In 1936 the Ioannina prefecture where the area was included, divided into two parts and the new prefecture took the name Thesprotia which was its ancient name. Cham Albanians were given religious, but no ethnic minority status and there was little evidence of direct state persecution at this time.[25]

Since the Medieval Ages, the population of the region of Chameria was of mixed and complex ethnicity, with a blurring of group identities such as Albanian and Greek, along with many other ethnic groups. Information on the ethnic composition of the region over several centuries is almost entirely absent, with the strong likelihood that they did not fit into standard "national" patterns, as the 19th-century revolutionary nationalist movements wanted.

In Greek censuses, only Muslims of the region were counted as Albanians. According to the 1913 Greek census, 25,000 Muslims were living at the time in the Chameria region[21] who had Albanian as their mother tongue, from a total population of about 60,000, while in 1923 there were 20,319 Muslim Chams. In the Greek census of 1928, there were 17,008 Muslims who had it as their mother tongue.

The only census that counted Orthodox population of the region of Albanian ethnicity, was an unreliable one made by fascist Italy in 1941. This census found that in the region lived 54,000 Albanians, of whom 26,000 Orthodox and 28,000 Muslim and 20,000 Greeks.[20] After the war, according to Greek censuses where ethno-linguistic groups were counted, Muslim Chams were 113 in 1947 and 127 in 1951.

Statistics by Amadori Virgili, presented by the pro-Greek "Pan-Epirotic Union of America" for the Paris peace conference.[30]Note that the area represented here does not necessarily exactly match up to the modern provincial boundaries of Thesprotia.

With the exception of the part of Chameria lying in Albania, Chameria is nowadays inhabited mostly by Greeks as a result of the Cham exodus following World War II and subsequent assimilation of remaining Chams. The number of ethnic Albanians still residing in the Chameria region is uncertain, since the Greek government does not include ethnic and linguistic categories in any official census. According to the pro-Albanian[32][33] author Miranda Vickers, Orthodox Chams today are approximately 40,000.[34] The Arvanite dialect is still spoken by a minority of inhabitants in Igoumenitsa.[35] According to Ethnologue, in Florina[36] According to a survey conducted in 1994 the Albanian language in the region is dying fast, because it receives no kind of encouragement.[37]

^NGL Hammond, Epirus: The Geography, the Ancient Remains, the History and Topography of Epirus and Adjacent Areas, Published by Clarendon P., 1967, p. 31

^ abAn Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis: An Investigation Conducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation By Thomas Heine Nielsen, Københavns universitet Polis, Danish National Research Foundation Published by Oxford University Press, 2004 ISBN 0-19-814099-1, ISBN 978-0-19-814099-3

^More recent historians have criticized these statistics and noted that they may have undercounted drastically the number of non-Grecophone Christians in the region. Lambros A. Psomas, for example, notes in his 2008 Ethnographic Synthesis of the Population of Southern Albania (Northern Epirus) In the Beginning of the 20th Century that according to the same statistics, not a single Vlach appears in Metsovo, which is known to be a major center of Vlach population